The plan, obviously, is to convert it to a pizza oven. I assume the most important thing to do is to create a thermal mass on top of it. Does this look feasible? What's the best material to use for the thermal mass?

To make an efficient oven, you'll have to modify, by closing the chimney in the back, unless it already can be closed. Something must be done with the floor vent, its taking up most of your cooking space and will not allow heat saturation of the hearth. The door-ceiling ratio needs to be changed. I don't know if it was better than buying a steel barrel and starting from scratch. Go for it and good luck

Hi Jeff,
The steel dome oven to which you link is mine and yes it is successful. There are several WFOs that have been built using the steel dome idea I promoted on my thread. One is a commercial oven built on a trailer and which is local to where I live.

First thoughts are along the line of conventional barrel ovens which vent out the front into either a transition area to a chimney or to the world. If you follow that premise (conventional barrel oven) you will need to close off that rear chimney. This will take some design time. The height of the interior of the oven should be measured and using that figure as 100% compute 63% of that height. If the present height of the door is within a couple of percent of that 63% then no modification of the door will be needed. Otherwise you will probably end up modifying the door/entrance. That need not be as complicated as it sounds.

The thermal mass can be whatever you have available that is suitable. Closely stacked firebrick, basalt/fondu concrete (like I made) or some sort of castable refractory should work fine. That would of course be covered with insulation and then some sort of weatherization. All that is base on the premise that the burner as it sits is a simple steel shell with a firebrick hearth/floor.

That hole in the floor/hearth will need to closed off and the space filled with firebrick. The hearth will need to be insulated, perhaps removing the existing firebricks and rolling the oven over onto its top will permit a rim to be built around the parameter and so form a tray that you can cast with perlcrete or vermicrete. This might be considered first as trying to invert the oven once the refractory is added to the top will mean a great deal more work. Some sort of support for the insulation will then be needed as well as to get the oven to working height.

Sounds like a straightforward fun project. Personally I'd sit down and lay out all the steps and modifications I would want to take and make and thereby create a "critical path" to keep from working against myself.

Rather than designing for that which is unknown it would be easier to know which one has to do: make the doorway shorter or make the doorway taller (and by how much).

Leaving the chimney where it is in back isn't going to give you all that I expect you want from your WFO. By having the exhaust exit out the front one gets the airflow so that it comes in thru the entrance and flows along the hearth to the rear of the oven, it then flows up and along the top of the arch and ducking down and out the entrance. This is where the 63% ratio comes in; it wasn't achieved by some complex math formula but rather by examination of tens of centuries of constructed WFOs. It's empirical. Build it this ratio and the WFO will most likely work, build it to another ratio and it becomes a case of maybe it will work maybe not. It's your WFO you get to build it as you want, we are simply trying to give as good advice as we can.

By having the exhaust exit the door and into the world at large or into a transition chimney area you can also close up the oven and retain the heat inside for such things as overnight baking of pulled pork, baked Thanksgiving turkey, roast beef etc etc. Otherwise with the chimney in the back the heat will escape out the chimney when you shut the door.

And yes, I mean beneath the hearth...no matter that the bricks sit upon a steel plate all of the plate will be heated and will actually help bring the oven to working temperature faster than if it were just brick (this will probably cause a bit of a stir but frankly the steel plate allows more rapid transfer of heat to the refractory thru better conduction of the steel on the top of the inside to the refractory though perhaps a bit less so on the bottom as it is beneath the brick hearth...and you do want the brick hearth!). When you are designing your tray or whatever you use to contain the insulation I would suggest you keep in mind you want as little direct steel pathway from inside in the heated area to the outside. Build the form so it is removable or whatever.

I don't think you made a poor decision in your purchase. You can have a WFO in short time, a few weekends if you have a welder or have a friend who does. The local commercial steel domed oven of which I spoke... the builder didn't know how to weld when he started. Basically welding 1/4 steel plate takes far less skill than welding the thin stuff.

Thanks again, Wiley. You're great and very helpful and I appreciate the encouragement. I've been reading around and now understand the 63% ratio and the reason for the chimney placement; I should have read more before asking.

I'm going to pick the thing up tomorrow and will then have a better sense of what we've got. I'll post new pics and, I'm sure, new questions.

On the bright side, the last spontaneous purchase we made for my wife (this is not joke) was an arc welder! So we've got that part covered!

Picked up the stove today. Can't tell whether the news is good or bad. Turns out that it is wider than it is deep. I assume that is less than ideal? It is 39.5 inches wide and 20.5 inches deep (front to back). When I dream of WFO, this is certainly smaller than what I'd want, but does it sound too small? Could I cook, say, 2 pizzas in there at once?

As far as door to ceiling goes, the ceiling is 21.5" and the door opening is 12.5". That's 58%. However, there is about a 2" drop from the lip of the door to the hearth. If I put down a new layer of fire brick (1.25"), that would get me to just under 64%. Is that a reasonable plan or stupid?

To my untrained eye, it appears to be a very well built stove. The steel is quite thick, 1/4 inch. Is that a good thing?

I guess what I'm wondering whether it's worth trying to modify. The original idea (hope) was that it would be relatively simple. (Of course, I know all of that is relative...).

Gudday
64 per cent......recon you on a winner....that oven should breathe like a WFO should.
Oven width....best to have a deaper oven than wide. But consider bricking in the internal sides. 4 in and a bit firebrick each side that cuts 8 in off the width. So your now to 30 in by 21in roughly thats a lot closer. Brick externally back and roof and you have the thermal mass covered. insulated that ( dont forget the base) and I recon you'll have a working oven!
Width of door to oven width....Can be as wide as you want, the ratio of roof to door height is the most inportant thing. Check out WF bagel ovens they have a door that runs the full width of the oven.
Space for 2 pizza.....you'll have heaps. think of it this way with 3 min pizza.
It takes longer to make and longer time to eat than to cook. 3 pizza is about as many as I can handle without burning one. You have got to enjoy cooking them as well.... you can drink beer and talk to the guests and cook pizza at the same time you know. Sometimes the journey is just as enjoyable as the destination.

Jeff,
I'm with Dave on this one. The only suggestion would be when you are bricking up the insides to create a ledge on each side such that you can place a grill (sort of like a shelf resting on each the ledge at end). Instant Tuscan Grill.

You can create the ledge by staggering the bricks. I would suggest dry stacking on the inside so you can then modify things if needed and easily replace them if damaged.

So some quick new questions: I'm pretty sure this won't be my permanent oven, so I think in the near term I'd like to try and do something quick and cheap, just to see what happens. That means closing up the chimney hole (can I just put some kind of cap on it?) and maybe creating a new entrance. Could I just do some sort of impromptu thing like Dave's here?(http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/43/o...-16229-17.html (Oven on wheels)). That rig just sort of sits near the entrance, right? It's not permanently attached?

Lastly, what would be the quickest and cheapest (non-permanent) way to create some kind of thermal mass and/or insulation on the outside? For that matter, what if I did nothing at all? Would I get enough heat from the steel itself to cook some pizzas?

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